Week Six: Willow

Year: 1988

Director: Ron Howard

Nostalgia Meter: 5/5

Most Recent Watch: A couple years ago, I guess?

I have watched Willow as an adult, but it's also been awhile. And although I wouldn't quite put it on my top ten movies list, it's just as much of a nostalgia trip as The Dark Crystal. Unlike The Dark Crystal, however, I have a fun childhood story to go along with this one.

Willow was the first time I was introduced to the concept of people with dwarfism. If you're not familiar with the movie, the titular character is played by Warwick Davis, who was probably the most well-know actor with dwarfism before Peter Dinklage. You probably know Davis best as Wicket the Ewok from Return of the Jedi and Professor Flitwick (and the goblin Griphook) from the Harry Potter movies. Anyway, in Willow, little people are referred to as "Nelwyns," and they're basically halflings in the standard language of the high fantasy genre. Now, my mom explained to me very early on that movies are not real. Willow is also very clearly a fantasy movie. There are trolls, dragons, fairies, and magic It is especially not real. So, I wasn't aware that there are actual people with dwarfism. I thought they were just part of the made up movie world. Cut to kindergarten, where I discovered that a good friend's mom was a little person. I was so excited and honored to meet her because of Willow. I openly refer to her as a Nelwyn, and I assume my mom had to politely explain about this movie.

So, back to the actual film. Plot wise, it's standard hero's journey type stuff, and some of the characters match up suspiciously well with those in Star Wars. Willow, a simple farmer who dreams of greater things, obviously pairs with Luke Skywalker. His older, cooler, bad boy companion, Madmartigan, is basically Han Solo. Madmartigan's love interest, the fierce and capable Sorsha is pretty similar to Leia. And the two tiny brownies, Rool and Franjean, serve as a bit of comic relief much like R2D2 and C-3PO. I mean, really, the gang is all here!

This isn't just a normal case of lazy copying though. It's George Lucas copying himself. Willow was written by Lucas, and though he didn't direct Willow, he was often on set giving Ron Howard feedback. At least judging by the behind-the-scenes featurette on my DVD copy, it looks like the film was a fairly collaborative effort between the two of them. It was also kind of neat watching the behind-the-scenes stuff because Ron Howard comes across as a nerdy fanboy. He was already a professional at that point, having directed Splash and Cocoon, but he still seems really pumped to be working with Lucas, and it's adorable. So, if you can forgive George Lucas for plagiarizing himself, Willow is a pretty good family movie. My criteria for a "good family movie" being one that doesn't have a lot of graphic content, doesn't leave anyone feeling bored, and doesn't talk doesn't to the kids in the audience.

Rewatching this movie critically as an adult, the biggest thing that I noticed was that it actually has a wide variety of female characters, and none of them are helpless or stupid. If you want to go by Bechdel Test standards, it passes really easily and almost immediately. Although not all of the characters are named, the very first chunk of dialogue is several women talking to each other about a female baby. However, there is one particular scene that really stands out to me in this regard. During the climactic battle of the entire film, Willow goes with Sorsha and Fin Raziel (a powerful and good sorceress) to rescue the previously mentioned baby, Elora Danan, who is supposed to cause the evil Queen Bavmorda's downfall. As the three of them are about to confront Bavmorda, Willow sort of loses courage and stays behind in the stair well. Sorsha comforts him, and then she and Fin Raziel go to confront Bavmorda themselves. Fin Raziel and Bavmorda go on to have an epic Gandlaf vs. Saruman magical duel, and not a word spoken between them concerns a male character. It's pretty neat that the male protagonist is completely left out of the fight at this point. Sorsha easily kills off Bavmorda's henchmen, and the sorceress's fight is impressive.

It's also notable that Fin Raziel and Bavmorda are both older women, who aren't often given such active roles in adventure movies. Bavmorda is basically your stereotypical evil queen, but old and female don't automatically mean evil in Willow. Fin Raziel is also an old woman, perhaps even older than Bavmorda, and she's very solidly on the good side. Sorsha is also pretty cool. She's witty and a good fighter. She has a crazy sword with a weird serrated edge. She gets to be both a badass warrior and beautiful queen. There are also a couple other female characters worth mentioning. The unnamed midwife who initially rescues the newborn Elora Danan from Bavmorda is the starring character of a brief prologue where she travels with and cares for the baby in the wilderness for several months. Then, it is Willow's wife, Kaiya, who insists that the Ufgood family keep Elora Danan when they find her floating down the river. Kaiya seems to be a fairly domestic woman, no one particularly challenging to the gender status quo, but she is kind and patient and completely ignores Willow's initial protests about protecting Elora Danan. So, the movie has a few different version of female characters, and all of them are brave and capable in their own ways which is pretty neat.

Aside from the characters though, I have to mention the special effects in Willow because there are some cool ones. The most exciting of the effects heavy scenes is the battle that suddenly and unexpectedly involves a dragon, possibly the ugliest dragon you've ever seen. It's a gross, two-headed, pug-nosed thing that Willow accidentally creates while trying to defend himself from a troll. It's also a practical effect. I can't quite tell for certain, but I think its stop motion. I love these kind of things because, even thought they can look a bit campy, they have a solidity to them that is just completely absent from early and/or cheap CGI. There are some other impressive practical effects used when Bavmorda turns an army of humans into pigs. The half-pig/half-man masks and costumes that the actors wear in that scene are probably the most frightening part of the whole movie. Another piece of potentially scary imagery is the pack of dog-like creatures that Bavmorda uses to hunt down her enemies. They're called "dogs" by the characters, but they look more like a dog/giant rat/wild boar mash-up. In real life, they're rottweilers wearing monster costumes, a trick that makes the creatures' movement disturbingly natural looking.

I'm a big fan of the previously mentioned special effects, but apparently, the real innovative and unique effects show up when Willow is trying to transform Fin Raziel back into her human form, as Bavmorda had long ago turned her into a possum and stranded her on a deserted island. Willow can't quite get the magic right, so there are a couple sequences where Raziel changes from one kind of animal to another. At different points in the movie she is a possum, a crow, a goat, an ostrich, a tiger, and then finally human. The bizarre and shifting half-forms that Raziel suffers through were created by Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company that George Lucas created for Star Wars. The process invented to animate these scenes involved combing photographed images of puppets and animals by morphing them together with software. Although it's not my favorite effect from the movie, I have to admit, it does look great.

Willow, despite being nothing special concerning plot and thematic content, is so much fun to watch. Much like the Star Wars films, it avoids being campy and childish, while still being easily digestible for younger audiences. There are a few other bright points in the film that I'm not going to devote too much time to, like the genuine chemistry between Val Kilmer (Madmartigan) and Joanne Whalley (Sorsha) that makes their silly romantic sub-plot so much easier to believe, and the scene where Willow and his friend Meegosh meet the queen of fairies. At the end of the day, it's as good of an example of epic, high fantasy story-telling as you could possibly pack into two hours.